Poison for Breakfast, Anyone?

ANH-USA tested common breakfast foods for the presence of glyphosate, the toxic herbicide. Here’s what we found. Action Alert!

By now it has become common knowledge that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup—the most common weed killer in the world—poses many grave threats to human health and has been classified as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

We also know that glyphosate is increasingly prevalent, turning up in blood, urine, and even breast milk. To dig deeper—to see just how pervasive glyphosate is in our food system—we tested twenty-four popular breakfast foods and ingredients, including items such as flour, corn flakes, bagels, yogurt, potatoes, organic eggs, and coffee creamers. (Click hereto read the full white paper.)

The findings confirmed what we feared: our food system has been saturated with glyphosate, reaching even into some organic products.

While the levels of glyphosate found in these foods were below the safety levels set by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these limits have come under fire by consumer advocates for being far too high. The EPA’s safety limits also fail to take into account recent evidence of the danger of “inert” ingredients (which are actually not inert) added to pesticides. Remember, too, that the EPA relies almost exclusively on science funded by industry to determine the safety of the chemicals it reviews.

We were surprised to see foods that tested highest for glyphosate were from non-Roundup Ready crops—and these crops are presumably sprayed less heavily with Roundup than the crops that are designed to tolerate the herbicide.

Especially worrisome are the levels of glyphosate found in some organic eggs and dairy creamers, animal products which are not sprayed directly with glyphosate. This indicates that the chemical is entering the food chain and building up in the tissues of animals—likely also the case for humans.

Clearly, Americans are consuming glyphosate on a daily basis. And this, according to the evidence accumulated so far, will have profound consequences for our health.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it also appears that we’re being exposed to glyphosate in less obvious ways—through hygienic products. A new study found that 85% of cotton products such as gauze, cotton balls, and feminine products like pads and tampons tested positive for glyphosate. Sixty-two percent of the products also contained AMPA, a derivative of glyphosate that could be even more toxic.

The pervasiveness of glyphosate in our food and consumer products could be setting the stage for a public health nightmare, yet government officials are unconcerned, presumably because of their close crony ties to Big Food, Big Biotech, and Big Pharma. In 2013, the EPA actually raised the allowable limits of glyphosate in food and feed crops. That’s right: they raised it!

Action Alert! Write to the EPA and urge them to reconsider their approval of glyphosate. Please send your message immediately.